Written by Michael Krouze
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The AI Adaptability Accelerator: Using AI to Compress Learning Cycles
Most teams point AI at execution: write the email faster, generate the code faster. That misses the thing that actually compounds. The real advantage comes from pointing AI at your learning loop, so your organization gets smarter every cycle instead of just busier. Speed of doing is not speed of learning.
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5 Ways to Use Product Vision to Focus Ideation Without Killing Creativity
Most product brainstorms fail one of two ways. They generate 200 ideas that connect to nothing, or they produce a tidy list of safe ideas that just echo the roadmap. Both get product vision wrong. They treat it as either irrelevant to ideation or as a fence that screens ideas out. There's a better way to hold it.…
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From AI Theater to AI Engine: Making Your Generative AI Experiments Add Up
Nearly everyone is "doing AI." 88% of companies, by McKinsey's count. So why do 95% of generative AI pilots never return a dime? It isn't the technology, and it isn't the experimenting. The trouble is that most companies run their experiments as a scattered pile of one-offs, and a scattered pile is all they ever add…
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The 4th Horizon: Why Your Planning Model Has a Blind Spot
The Three Horizons framework shaped a generation of strategy. It's still useful. But when Anthropic's Mythos can rewrite your cybersecurity assumptions overnight, and a quantum chip can do in five minutes what would take a supercomputer 10 septillion years, planning by time horizon isn't enough. The most dangerous…
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5 Brainstorming Lenses That Surface Opportunities Others Miss
Most teams brainstorm technology opportunities by asking one question: "How do we use this?" It's a fine question. It's also only one door. And one door leads to one kind of opportunity, usually an incremental feature idea. The teams that find the whitespace others miss aren't smarter. They ask different questions.…
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The Leadership Tax: How Executives Accidentally Block Organizational Adaptability
A VP of Engineering calls an all-hands. "We're empowering teams! You have autonomy to make decisions!" Three weeks later, she blocks a team's architectural decision because "that's not how we've done it before." Six weeks later, teams still wait for approval. The VP is frustrated: "I told them they're empowered. Why…
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The Exponential Gap: Why Your Three-Year Roadmap is Already Obsolete
Technology is accelerating faster than your planning cycles. In a world where AI tools reach mainstream adoption in months rather than years, the gap between linear strategies and exponential change is where relevance goes to die. Learn why the old playbook of annual planning is failing—and how to build a dynamic,…
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The Ecosystem Effect: How Growth, Maturity, and Momentum Around a Technology Shape Its Fate
In the race to define the future, emerging technologies often seize headlines and boardroom attention. Yet, for every Internet or smartphone that reshapes the world, dozens of brilliant ideas falter. The reason? It rarely comes down to technical capability alone. Instead, the deciding factor is often the ecosystem…
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Looking Beyond the Tech: How to Spot the Whitespace in Emerging Technology Waves
What happens when the landscape changes and we only pay attention to the shiny object in the middle? In this piece, I want to explore what I call the "whitespace"—the structural, behavioral, and economic shifts that surround a new GPT. If you're a product leader, this isn't a side conversation. It's core to how you…
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Architecture Over Throughput: Why System Design Now Outweighs Raw Coding Speed
In the cloud/AI era, feature velocity without architectural vision is just accelerating into a wall. If it feels like the pace of technology change has gone from fast to unreasonable , it’s not your imagination. In the last 15 years: Cloud evolved from niche to default, spawning thousands of services—each with its…
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Ship Fast or Get Left Behind: Why Your Product Development Speed Matters
Look at how fast things move now. ChatGPT went from zero to everywhere in under a year. New JavaScript frameworks pop up monthly. Companies that took decades to build are getting disrupted by startups that move faster. Here's the brutal truth: having good ideas isn't enough anymore. You need to act on them before…
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Finding the Signal: How to Spot Tech-Driven Opportunities Worth Pursuing
Emerging technology continues to emerge faster, louder, and with bigger promises. But while the hype cycles spin faster than ever, most organizations still struggle to answer a fundamental question: Which of these tech-driven ideas are actually worth our time? It’s not a shortage of ideas that holds teams back—it’s…
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New Tech Is Everywhere. The Hard Part Is Shipping the Right Product.
Emerging technologies promise transformation: faster development, smarter products, competitive edge. But too often, those promises turn into broken ones. Not because the tech didn’t work, but because the organization didn’t know how to capture the value.
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Future-Proof Leadership: Why Mindset Agility is Your Greatest Asset
The pace of innovation isn’t slowing down. AI, quantum computing, decentralized systems—what feels cutting-edge today will be table stakes tomorrow. In this environment, frameworks and tools will evolve. Markets will shift. But one leadership trait will remain timeless: Mindset Agility .
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The Balancing Act: How Great Leaders Dance Between Innovation and Investment
If you've ever felt torn between chasing bold ideas and playing it safe, you're not alone. The tension between innovation and risk management is a constant in product leadership. The best leaders don’t eliminate this tension—they leverage it. Welcome to the art of balancing the Innovator and Investor mindsets.
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Rethinking the Query: The Rise of AI-Enabled Web Search
AI-enabled web search refers to the use of artificial intelligence, especially large language models (LLMs), to deliver search results in a more conversational, contextual, and direct way. Instead of offering a ranked list of links like traditional search engines, AI-powered search engines synthesize and generate…
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The Investor Mindset: Turning Tech Dreams into Sustainable Business Value
It’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of emerging technology. Bold ideas, cutting-edge tools, and ambitious visions fuel the early stages of product discovery. But once the brainstorming fades, one question remains: Is this idea actually worth pursuing? This is where the Investor mindset takes center stage.
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Building Software in the Age of Vibes
There’s a new kind of software development sweeping through startups and strategy decks alike. It’s fast. It’s weird. It kind of works. And if you squint, it might be the beginning of a new programming paradigm. They call it vibe coding . Think prompt-based development where human developers act more like directors…
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When Bold Ideas Meet Reality: Mastering the Shift to the Investor Mindset
Innovation is exhilarating. There’s a certain adrenaline rush when ideas are flowing, possibilities seem endless, and emerging technology feels like a blank canvas. But at some point, every product leader hits a critical juncture—the moment where inspiration must give way to interrogation. This is where you shift…
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Unleashing the Innovator Mindset: How to See Opportunities Others Miss
In a world where technology evolves faster than most organizations can adapt, survival belongs to those who don’t just use emerging tech—but reimagine what’s possible with it. That’s the domain of the Innovator mindset . While others ask, “How can we apply this technology to what we already do?” , the Innovator asks,…
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The Twin Mindsets Every Product Leader Needs in a Tech-Driven World
There’s a quiet truth lurking beneath every breakthrough product and every failed innovation: Mindset determines trajectory. In an era where technologies like AI, IoT, and cloud platforms evolve faster than most roadmaps can keep up, product leaders aren’t just tasked with shipping features—they're navigating…
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MCP and the Future of AI Integration
Imagine if your AI assistant could not only understand your requests but also seamlessly interact with your tools and data—without custom integrations. Enter the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an emerging standard that's poised to revolutionize AI integration.
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Generative AI: A Commodity, Not A Unique Proposition
In today's era of digital transformation, everyone is sprinting to harness the power of generative AI. Indeed, it seems as though the "AI train" has left the station, and those not on board risk being left behind. It's an exciting period, mirroring the foundational shifts of the internet and cloud computing. But…
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Attainability: the third of three critical foundations for technology strategy and architecture in a fast-changing world
When we speak about attainability in technology and product development, we are thinking of some particular questions. is it possible? Can it be done in a reasonable timeframe? Can it be done at a reasonable cost? The answers to these questions will assist you in understanding the attainability of a particular…
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Adaptability: the second of three critical foundations for technology strategy and architecture in a fast-changing world
Adaptability is about building in the ability to change your systems and strategies as the changes occur quickly. Can you quickly adapt it if your cloud provider releases a new service that can cut your operations costs in half? Or, have you poured virtual concrete around your architectures and strategies such that…
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Innovation: the first of three critical foundations for technology strategy and architecture in a fast-changing world
I see innovation as introducing something new that adds value for the customer. When building a product, innovation needs a purpose, and the customer needs to be at the center of that purpose.
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Living in a world of constant technological change
Ignoring change means increased technical debt, missed opportunities, and potential loss of competitive advantage. You can find yourself left behind if you allow the world to change around you but do not change with it.